Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 We believe that Christ is the head of the church and the church is his body. And that there are things that the head wants to happen within the body of Christ and that throughout church history, there have been times when things are being restored, where things are being, um, reclaimed by the body of Christ and one of these areas and the area that's particularly the focus of this series is what we call the AEST in Ephesians four, which we'll look at in a moment it's the apostolic, the prophetic, the evangelistic, the shepherd, and the teacher. And we believe in these days that God is restoring to the body of Christ, those five major organs of the body of Christ, so that we can function effectively and fruitfully and powerfully. If we are to look at these five gifts and previously we've looked at an introduction to this theme, we've looked at the apostolic.
Speaker 0 00:00:58 We've looked at the prophetic, we've looked at the evangelistic, and today we're gonna particularly look at the shepherd in grace, that God has gifted. His people with many people here are also, they've already completed a survey in order to find what grace is most present or graces are most present in their lives. So that all of us, cuz I believe this is not about just forming teams in church. This is about the body of Christ, knowing who they are, knowing what God has gifted them with and coming alive with it. This is not a time for the church to be in the stands of the football stadium, cheering a few people on the pitch. This is a time for us to all get our boots on and to get on the pitch and for us to discover what God's called us to be. But let me just give you some notice of what happens if a church, if the body is led by one of these specific ministries at the exclusion of the others, if a church is led by an apostolic leader exclusively and they in their team, they don't have the other four major gifts present.
Speaker 0 00:02:13 Then the church will be a church that will break new ground. It will be innovative. It will always be pushing for new territory to step out into new things, but it also seriously runs the risk of burning out and overstretching itself. That's what happens if the apostolic is the only gift in leading a church, if a church is led by a prophetic ministry that is exclusively prophetic, then you will find that that church is very good. At speaking truth to power, it's probably very justice orientated. It will have lots of care for the marginalized. It will have intense worship. Prayer. Spiritual warfare will be right on the front line of the church, but it runs the risk of becoming wacky, demanding moralistic judgemental.
Speaker 0 00:03:13 And if a church is led exclusively by ministries, then you will find that present in that church will be a great focus on reaching the lost through outreach spirituality in those environments will often be measured by how much of a heart do you have for the lost, but such environments run the risk of feeling like the church is a sales team with a pushy opinionated and driving emphasis. It can also be a fairly spiritually shallow environment. And then a church that's led exclusively by shepherds, which I would suggest has been much of the Western church. Shepherds will create environments that love and care for the needs of the body. And they will create a strong sense of communal and relational wellbeing, but such environments can become risk adverse codependent, exclusive overprotective and highly cautious. And then to complete the set. If a church is led exclusively by a teaching ministry, you'll find that that church will be well informed, committed to discipleship, but such environments can be over intellectual knowledge based and right doctrine can become more important than right doing spirituality in such environments can be equated to how much Bible knowledge you have.
Speaker 0 00:05:08 The answer is not for a church to be led by one of those exclusively, but by all of those together that's God's plan. Over the years, I've been involved in consultation with churches who have been looking for a new minister. And one of the things that becomes apparent when they're looking for a new minister, I've been away, um, on retreat days with the church team and you say, what are you looking for in your next minister? And they make a list and someone writes it on a board and they nearly always ask for a gift that the previous minister didn't have. <laugh> they think we missed that. We need that. We want that. And really they want everything the previous person had plus that. But the reality is there is no one person that is able to be everything it's impossible. Yeah, that's right. And we find that if we emphasize just one of these things, then we, as well as the strengths they bring, we are opening ourselves to the weakness. That's the opposite side of what they carry. But there's a problem with each of these gifts working together. And that is they see the world so differently.
Speaker 0 00:06:37 A pastor and an evangelist and an apostle. It sounds like the makings of a bad joke, doesn't it <laugh> but they see things so differently. And unless they are committed to relationally working this through ally together, then usually there will be some level of fallout because the pastors want to keep it all cozy. And the apostle wants to make it all risky and they fall out with each other. But I want, and I believe the Lord is looking for rediscover to be a place that if you like, there's five fields and there's five incubators in E in these fields and these incubators, they incubate the apostolic. They incubate the prophetic, the evangelistic, the shepherds and the teachers. And we are a place that grows each of these graces. I believe that's what the Lord is seeking to do at rediscover. Of course, these graces are not just given to run church, but they're given to reveal Christ through his people.
Speaker 0 00:07:48 Yes. And whichever grace or graces you carry strongest in your life. Hear these words, the Lord has need of you. Let's look at our key text, Ephesians four, verse 11, 13, and it says this and he himself that's Jesus gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers to equip the saints for works of ministry to build up the body of Christ until we all reach unity in the faith. And in the knowledge of God's son, growing into maturity with a stature measured in Christ's fullness that I believe is God's plan today. We're gonna look at shepherds what a special grace. This is. Many of you will have an understanding of what a shepherd is or what a shepherd does or what this grace looks like when it's present in someone's life. We tend to use the word pastor these days. Don't we, that's not found in the Bible. That is a Latin word. That means shepherd.
Speaker 0 00:09:11 I guess it might be a bit weird. Introducing someone as shepherd, mark <laugh>, but the church has pretty much defaulted to calling anybody that's in any form of responsibility in church pastor, whether they've got a shepherd in grace or hard or not, we call them pastor. That's our sort of culture that we have developed. And let's think about this word pastor for a moment, because we know that language can mean different things to different people. So if I said this morning, um, uh, Nita, my wife is sick. The over thirties in the room are like, oh, is it serious? The under thirties in the room are going. Yeah, man, she's well sick. <laugh> wow. You know, there, there are, there are differences of how we understand words and for this, this sense of shepherd or pastor, I don't want us just to evaluate our own insights or thoughts or understanding.
Speaker 0 00:10:13 I want us to look at the scriptures today and I want us to look at what the scriptures teach a shepherd is what a shepherd in grace looks like, how a shepherd in grace manifests itself in the life of God's people. And the amazing thing is that we have a wonderful example, exhibit a, that is given us in the scriptures and he is called the good shepherd. Yeah. Yeah. Amen. And so we could do no better than looking at the good shepherd to understand what shepherding means, but the word pastor has become synonymous with a wide range of functions today. A pastor can be found to do the following, to be the human resources manager of the team in the church to be the project manager of buildings, to be in financially conversant with spreadsheets, to be an administratively efficient, with communication, to be in technologically proficient with computers, to be in creatively wired, to produce videos and graphics, to be imaginably inspired, to develop new initiatives, to be evangelistically fruitful, to set an example of leading others, to Christ, to be an necessarily determined, to set the temperature of prayer, to be an experienced in all of the gifts of the spirit to be so speedy and visiting the sick that you get there before the ambulance arrives, to become a marriage counselor, to have the best memory ever to remember, not just people's names and birthdays, but to remember every incident of their life, to be both patient.
Speaker 0 00:11:50 When people want to talk to you and to be dripping with an oozing with wisdom, when they wanna listen to be a theologian, to be a church planter, to be able to engage everybody from the youngest member of the church to the oldest and the list could go on, that is the job description. It's not, but it's the expectation of some of what a pastor is. Now. Each of these things are important and they need to be done. And there are other things I could have added to that list as well. There are things that land on the desk of the pastor, because we have created an environment that basically says this, that we, the church will fund the work of the church. So the church can employ the people to do the work of ministry. And there is a serious problem with that. First of all, there's never enough money to employ enough people to do all of these things.
Speaker 0 00:12:46 Secondly, even if there was, I believe it would deny God's plan for his church, which is that the whole body is equipped to do works of service and ministry. I believe that's not plan B that's plan a we're not seeking to get everyone to be aware of their gift and call because we just want to do more it's because we're being faithful to God's call upon his church. And it's about time. The body gets out of bed snaps out of its slumber, gets up from the duvet and says, we are here to serve God in our generation. This is what the church is for. This is why we are called. So we have people who are being called pastors that we could call them jacks of all trades and the masters of none feeling failures. Do you know how many times I feel like I miss it?
Speaker 0 00:13:41 Uh, you probably have your own understanding of the times you feel I miss it, but we have expectations. And there are so many things to do with so little time and such a restricted amount of bandwidth of ability. And I believe that God is looking to raise up and mobilize his people. I believe AEST is God's formula his answer, his demonstration of the, for the people of God to come alive in this day and to reveal God to the nations. So what is the Bible teacher about this shepherd in grace? Well, as I said, let's look at the good shepherd together in John 10 verse 11, we read these words. Jesus said, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the shape. Now I know we are here in Devon. We are surrounded by rural locations. We have farmers in the church community, and we have some of those farmers that keep sheep, you know, something of what it is to be a modern day shepherd in Devin. But of course, when Jesus said these words, he didn't have any of the technologies that we may have today. He would've been speaking into a, a context of an Israeli shepherd thousands of years ago. And so it's important that we look at some of our imagery that his hearers would've understood in order to understand what he was saying. Let's look at some of these things that were common to Israeli shepherds in the Eastern Bible times. First of all, each sheep was known.
Speaker 0 00:15:29 Do you know, the shepherd would give names? So the sheep might pick out a characteristic of them might look in, I don't know, what would you call them? Flaky. I guess wooly probably wouldn't work with it, but there was some something that would identify about each of the sheep and give them names. And he would name the sheep. The, the shepherd knew his sheep. And we see that in John ten three, it says he calls his sheep by name. What's your name? Are you thinking about it?
Speaker 1 00:16:15 <laugh>
Speaker 0 00:16:15 What's your name? Come on, show your name up. Come on, be more confident than that. After three, everybody shot your name out at the same time. 1, 2, 3. He knows your name. You're not a stranger. He knows you. The good shepherd knows your name.
Speaker 0 00:16:39 And it says then that as well as calling his sheep by name, he leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them. Do you know the Eastern shepherd doesn't drive his sheep. It's not there with a stick going, come on now, move over, come on, keep going. There's not a sense of drivenness to the work of the shepherd. The understanding of the time would be that he leads them. You remember Psalm 23. He leads me besides still waters. Yeah, the Lord is my shepherd. He leads me. Yeah. That there is an understanding of the shepherd. Sometimes they would stand at the front. Sometimes they would stand at the back and sometimes they would stand at the side, but there was a, there was a gentle sort of coax in an encouragement, a guiding that enabled the sheep to get to their destination. And they didn't have like big highways. Like we have my today. If this mic is a problem, I'm happy to switch to the hand. You want me to switch the handheld
Speaker 3 00:17:48 That's
Speaker 4 00:17:49 <laugh>.
Speaker 0 00:18:00 So in those days there wouldn't have been hedges, protecting one field owned by one owner. There wouldn't have been fences erected. There would've just been pathways that would've been alongside agricultural fields, and they wouldn't have been wide paths either. And yet the, she had to get the sheep through these narrow pathways. And if the sheep wandered and began to eat some of the things that were being grown in the field that would've been considered as some sort of failure. In fact, the shepherd would've been responsible to pay re penance to the owner of that field. So there were narrow paths and this sheep, the, she had to lead and guide the sheep through these narrow path to get to their destination. The Lord is my shepherd and he leads me in pathways of righteousness for his name sake. Then the shepherd would also restore Australian sheep and also find loss shape.
Speaker 0 00:19:10 Do you know an isolated sheep is a vulnerable sheep. Sheep have very little sense of direction. They have very little awareness of danger. Rick got two dogs. One of them's a little Chihuahua. And, uh, we, we walk these dogs, you know, they, this Chihuahua can keep going. We think, um, she is quite a Dyna little thing. And, um, just thinking the amount of steps that she would do in order to con to go through one of our 10 K walks or something, she would absolutely, um, you know, hit the step count pretty seriously. Wouldn't she with her four little legs, but there was one day we had an elders meeting. We were at Allen Heather's home and we were on Saturday and we had ELs meeting and, and we, we get a phone call. The chia was missing <laugh> now we got a secure garden area. We don't know how she got out. Um, our kids promised us they didn't leave the door open or anything, but this chia was missing. And, um, so, um, we tried to make sure they checked one of the beds and wasn't anywhere in the home. Anyway, a few hours later, this Chihuahua turned up
Speaker 0 00:20:19 And she was a bit distressed and there was like a local Facebook community page for the area that we live. And we read on that Facebook community page that afternoon, that this Chihuahua had been spotted on the roots that we walk. She had obviously got outta the house somehow and just walked the walk, crossing major roads down by the river. She just taking herself for a walk. It could catch on couldn't it. If her dogs would be amazing <laugh>, but it was like mapping out this route and she found her way back. Sheep don't do that. They don't have that sense of direction. They need a shepherd. And the shepherd shepherd in grace restores strange sheep and helps the lost sheep. We read in Isaiah 53, verse six, we all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned in our own way and the Lord has laid on him.
Speaker 0 00:21:23 The iniquity of us all back to that shepherd, given his life for the sheep. Again, Luke 15 six is then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, rejoice with me. I have found my lost sheep shepherd in grace is there in times of need. There are times when a shepherd might need to cross a stream. For example, now there are some sheep that will stick close to the shepherd. And as the Shepard goes into the stream, they will be very close. They'll stay close and they won't be distressed. They won't be, um, perturbed by the water. They just stick close to the she, and they make their way through the stream and get to the other side confidently with no issues. But then those who weren't particularly sticking close to the shepherd, they get on it in a little bit sort of gingerly, really.
Speaker 0 00:22:15 And, um, some of them, the streams begin to just take them down a little bit, but they find they foot in. They find a bit of the, for that's in the water and they make their way out a little bit stressed, but they get outta the water. But then there are others, particularly the lambs that they go in the water and they begin to drift with the flow of the water in the stream. And when the shepherd sees that the shepherd jumps in the water and goes towards the sheep and picks the sheep up and holds it close to his Bo and gets outta the water and puts it on dry ground. And there are stories of shepherds who would get to the side and all the, she are now safe after the little adventure and they begin to circle the shepherd and they begin to gamble around like as if, wow, this is we've made it.
Speaker 0 00:23:05 Thank you. And they sort of look at the shepherd. Thank you for helping us. There. He is with us in our times of need the good shepherd in Isaiah 43, verse two, we read when you pass through the waters, Isaiah will be with you. When you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you because the good shepherd is with us. The good shepherd he looks after the sick, the wounded, you know, sometimes a lamb can suffer from, might be heat stroke from too much sun exposure or might have got caught in some brambles. And I think this is the image that David had in Psalm 23. You anoint my head with oil. Olive oil was one of the, the fixes, the cures or the shepherd would pour over the sheep in order to try and help its pain. And the good shepherd attends to the sick and the wounded.
Speaker 0 00:23:59 The good shepherd protects the sheep from wild animals or robbers. Those things are a real danger as they seek to get picked off from the group. We see that David King, David, the shepherd boy, we see this lovely young man playing the harp or whatever other instrument he had singing beautiful Psalms to the Lord was also able to tear a lion apart and a bear. Why? Because they went for the sheep. Yeah. They went for the sheep. If you wanna see a tenacious side of me, go for the sheep because there's something protective, you know, in your family's people can injure you, but they go for your family. Woo. That was a big mistake. There's a protection protective site to a shepherd. And then there's lots of other things I could pick on, but I'm gonna go for one more. I love this. There's a sense of the shepherd has fun and plays with the sheep.
Speaker 0 00:25:04 Being with a sheep day in day out means that there are bonds and connections that are made there between the shepherd and the sheep. And sometimes that can develop into a playfulness. Sometimes there are stories in this sort of era where the shepherd would've played hide and seek with the sheep where he would've run off, looks like he's gonna run away. And the sheep whoa. And they chase after him. And they find him and they circle him. And they look with, I dunno, if a sheep can smile, but they sort of look in some sort of way. That's like an affection. Ha. That was fun. I love that. I love that picture. I love that God is with us in times of joy. And there's a, there's a wonder and a fun to be in with the Lord. It's not always intense and prayerful and mournful, but there's joy where spirit of the Lord is there's Liberty and there's life.
Speaker 0 00:26:05 There's life in all, its fullness. When you're around the good shepherd, we need to hang around the shepherd. Thank God for the good shepherd, but thank God for the shepherding grace that he has given to his people, not just for those who will allow this grace to flow through them, to the body of Christ. Cuz there are some that fit that category and your understanding, those people who have the title of pastor, maybe those who are life group leaders, thank God for all life group leaders. It's our goal that there will be 50 life groups in the next two years. We need many more people who will take up this shepherd in mantle because it's very, very difficult to remember the names of five, 600 people. Unless you've got the gift of God's Omni presence and insight and all understanding all wisdom or knowledge, it's very, very difficult and we need chic not to be alone.
Speaker 0 00:27:05 We need them to be in ministries. We need 'em to be in small groups. We need you to be in one and some, we need you to help lead those as well. Particularly those who've got a shepherd in gift upon their life, but it's not just for those who are involved in ministries that look like they're part of the church cuz the church is the ministry team of the church is when we're scattered as well as when we're gathered. Now you might still need to hone it just because you do the APS test. And it says that you are a, you have a shepherd grace on your life. Doesn't mean to say that you are a wise shepherd or a good shepherd. It just means that something that you need to cultivate, you need to develop and you need to learn and you need to grow.
Speaker 0 00:27:49 And there might be some things that need to be knocked off in your life and your experience in order for that to be a gift that can bless other people. But there is a beautiful grace of shepherd in that people have. But also this grace can be expressed and reflected in many spheres of influence in our life. We keep referring back to some illustrations that an called Alan hush is referring to. Here are some examples he gives of how shepherding grace can be in the spheres of influence in our life, in our employment, in our work, maybe community developers, people who have a heart to foster a sense of engagement in community. Some of you set WhatsApp groups up for your street. When the pandemic hit, some of you are involved in all sorts of adventures in order to try and I'm bringing community cohesion, maybe spiritual directors, people who get alongside and help pastorally nurture someone's wellbeing.
Speaker 0 00:28:50 And they walk with Jesus counselors, people who have insight and a care to look at the nuance of what's going on in someone's life and to help shepherd and care and pour oil upon them, relational networkers, people who are able to spot the gifts and others and join the dots and be able to bring them in a relational context, not a strategic, but a relational context, human resources, maybe you're in human resources and you hate it. And it's just, it's just like, how did you get into this? And you do the APS test and shepherding is your lowest. You probably need to change careers because you need to understand the grace of God in your life. Doesn't matter whether you've got a degree in it. If it's not your strength, you need to realign. Yeah. You need to find out what God's gifted you for.
Speaker 0 00:29:34 And if it's we look at teaching next week and maybe you're involved in something as pastoral and you should be involved in something that's teaching well, realign your career and change. And don't hide under a bushel, the strength that God has given you, but let it rise and become the person that God's made you to be. Recreational workers, people who are able to gather in those communities and make fun happen and able to gather around, um, community groups, social workers are able to get involved in the brokenness of people's lives. Maybe people in police or people in defense and there's other aspects that could happen in that as well. But those are just some examples of how the pastoral, the shepherd in grace can manifest outside of the church. Some of you will be particularly burdened for the needs that we are seeing emerge in our society.
Speaker 0 00:30:27 And you'll be thinking of ways that you can help what a beautiful gift to the church you are. And you must not hide that. We need the shepherds. You know, this is a really vulnerable thing for me to say, and I have alluded to it over recent times. But when I first came to the church nine years ago, it was, there was some brokenness in the church. There had been some difficulties here and there were a lot of people that were hurting and we knew neither. And I knew that God had called us here. We, we just knew there was a mandate. And I knew that God had put his hand upon this church to see the blessing in this place, overflow its walls. I knew that God had called this place to be a resource, a church planting center, an apostolic environment that would raise up and develop other leaders. And it would impact the Southwest. I really believe that. But we had a church that had a lot of people that were in pain and hurting and I felt God say to me, I don't want you to speak about vision for two years.
Speaker 0 00:31:46 I just want you to pastor and shepherd and love. When I do the APS test today, my shepherd in grace is quite low down the list of five. My top will be apostolic. I see things with fresh eyes. I'm entrepreneurial. I don't like to settle. If you, as a congregation say actually mark, we don't wanna plant churches. We don't wanna be a blessing to the Southwest. We don't want to give away. We don't wanna keep sending people out. We wanna stay and settle in this place. Then at that point, it's probably time for me to leave because I, I don't do boredom very well because there's a grace on my life for the apostolic. But that two years, God graced me with a shepherd in grace. And I don't understand how that happens. And it's one of the reasons we are using the term grace rather than gift or calling because there are times when God gives grace for seasons and times and it changes.
Speaker 0 00:33:01 And just because I do the AEST and it says apostolic doesn't mean to say, I don't have a Shepherd's heart. Doesn't mean to say I don't care about situations and things and people and circumstances doesn't mean I don't have compassion, but I need to recognize the prime gift that's on my life. And the prime gift of my life is to stir you up is to make sure you don't get bored. It's to make sure you don't just stay in a comfortable place because Hey sheep, the Lord has adventures for us all. And some of those adventures that the love each other, in fact, we're all called to love each other. We're all called to have grace towards one another. We're all called to forgive each other. We're all called to care for each other, but there are some here and you are beautiful shepherds. And I'm putting my hand up and say if with an apostolic grace on my life, if I lead this church purely apostolically I'll kill you.
Speaker 0 00:34:09 Ill ill stretches will burn out, will burn up. In fact, there are a number of scandals across the church, across the world right now that are all about abuse of power and all those sort of things. And I, I think there's an interest in study to be done on some of this, about how much some of these were apostolically driven environments that didn't have room for the pastoral on their teams. And I'm putting my hands up and saying, unless we incubate all five feels all five graces. We are going to have trouble. Yes, we need, we need each other. Yes. And don't measure someone else by your grace. Yes.
Speaker 5 00:34:55 Come on.
Speaker 0 00:34:56 Yeah. You know my, my dog doesn't look at the cat next door and say you don't bark. Like I do. It's a dog and it's a cat. Come on. It's an apostle and a shepherd. Yeah. It's an evangelist. And a, and a teacher stop measuring people according to the gracious on your life.
Speaker 5 00:35:18 Come on.
Speaker 0 00:35:20 And you are one of the, one of the reasons why churches have plumed for pasta led environments is because while we all love to be valued, don't we, we all love to be cared for. And we all love to feel safe, but it's not enough. And we end up with a field full of well fed sheep board. Yes. And on no adventure over stuffed.
Speaker 6 00:35:46 Yes.
Speaker 0 00:35:48 Give me another seminar. Give me another book. Give me another Bible plan. Give me, give me, give me, and God says, I have need of you church. It's our heart. And it's our prayer that all five feels will have incubators that will grow the apostolic that will grow the prophetic that will grow the evangelistic that will grow the shepherds and will grow the teachers. And we have need of you all. Let's pray together.
Speaker 0 00:36:33 As you reflect and take a moment. You know, the regular question I ask you, is there one thing out of what you've heard today, maybe in the worship, maybe in some of the interviews, maybe through the word, is there one thing now that you need to consolidate one thing that you need to make sure it doesn't float away like a balloon, a good idea, but it's gone by tomorrow. What's the one thing that you need to hold onto one idea. One truth, one challenge, one, hope, one promise. Hold that balloon really tightly. In fact, write it on your heart in your mind, write it on your notes on your phone or on your journal. Don't let it slip away. And as you hold that one truth. That one thing in your hand, is there an act of obedience, a response that you need to give in order to advance that one thing in your life, will you invite the holy spirit to come and give you courage and strength to be a doer, not just a hearer of that one thing across this room and online father, you are seeing every silent conversation that's taking place in people's lives. You're seeing all those one steps forward that people are committing to and spirit of God. We need your help to give us boldness and courage to take those steps forward.
Speaker 0 00:38:19 Help us not to procrastinate on them, help us not to put off tomorrow. What can be done today, help us to live the realities of those one things we pray. But Lord, we thank you for the shepherds. We thank you that you are our good shepherd and the rest are understudies. But Lord, we thank you for this grace. Every act of kindness we've experienced. Every time someone's chased after us to protect us. Every time someone has poured oil over our heads. Every time someone has loved us, every time someone's been empathetic. Every time someone has said the right word or been the right listening ear, we thank you for them. And Lord, I pray that the shepherding grace and gift will rise in the body of Christ. Lord, I pray that each of us will flourish and grow. And Lord, those who are in involved in demonstrating in the heart of a, in the places of society might be as a, the key carer in their marriage for a sick wife or husband. It might be a chaplain in their workplace. It might be a street pastor
Speaker 6 00:39:57 Among
Speaker 0 00:39:58 Some of those most vulnerable moments might be head of pastoral care in the workplace. Lord, I pray that the shepherds will thrive and I pray that we won't do it. So people will look at us and say, wow, you're so lovely. You're so kind. But that we'll be able to point to Christ and say, look at him, the good shepherd, my inspiration. So we have need of the apostles. We have need of the prophets. We have need of the evangelists and we have need of the shepherds. And next week we'll remind ourselves we have need of the teachers help us, Lord. We pray.
